Celery-spiked cocktail recipe: Green Hornet

My article, “Put A Stalk In It,” about celery-spiked cocktails, is in the May/June issue of Imbibe Magazine.

Although it may seem like an obscure ingredient for cocktails, once I started looking around, I found myself spotting celery everywhere, in various forms. Erick Castro has a Paloma riff at his new bar, Polite Provisions, subbing Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray soda in place of grapefruit Jarritos. Celery foam tops Bloody Marys.  A Celery Gimlet is on the menu at Saxon + Parole, one of my new favorite bars — with celery juice and Maldon sea salt. Celery shrub here. Celery bitters there. Celery seed-infused syrups. Housemade celery cordial at Dead Rabbit. In researching a separate article on Rock & Rye, I came across a 1902 reference to “La Rue’s Celery Rock & Rye.”  

It’s enough to make you want a good drink.  So here’s one to try. Although it didn’t fit into the Imbibe article, it’s a mighty refreshing cocktail nevertheless.

Green Hornet

Tona Palomino, Trenchermen, Chicago, IL

The menu description reads simply:  celery gin and tonic. “A lot of people thought it was celery gin,” notes Palomino. “Rather, it’s a celery-flavored gin and tonic.”

1.5 oz. gin

1.5 oz. fresh celery juice

3/4 oz. simple syrup

3/4 oz. lime juice

I dash  Bitter Truth Celery Bitters (optional)

1 oz.  tonic water

Measure everything but the tonic water into a cocktail shaker. Cover with ice and shake. Strain into a 12-ounce Collins glass filled with fresh ice. Top off with the tonic water.

Talking and tippling with the 3 “Vermouth-kateers”

The “Vermouth-kateers”: Carl Sutton, Neil Kopplin and Andrew Quady

Julia Child splashed French vermouth into much of her cooking. James Bond added Italian vermouth to his famous “shaken, not stirred,” martinis. But American-made vermouth is what’s now taking the cocktail world by storm.

So on April 8, it was my pleasure to moderate a panel of West Coast wine and vermouth producers, “Fountain of Vermouth,” at the International Association of Culinary Professionals conference in San Francisco.

The three panelists- who jokingly refer to themselves as “vermouth-kateers“-  were Neil Kopplin, a former bartender and current partner of Portland, Oregon’s Imbue Cellars, who makes his Bittersweet Vermouth with Willamette Valley Pinot Gris; Carl Sutton, owner of Sutton Cellars in Sonoma, Calif.; and Andrew Quady, a Madera, California-based winemaker who also produces vermouth under the Vya label.

Quady first provided the attendees with a definition of the aromatized, fortified “wine-but more than just wine,” including an overview of some of the botanicals used to flavor it.

That was followed by a lively debate between Kopplin and Sutton, who have divergent philosophies about what makes for good vermouth. Sutton said he starts with both wine and brandy that is “absolutely neutral” in character: “I want a completely blank canvas, something I can project onto.” He then adds as many as 17 ingredients for flavoring.

Kopplin, for his part, insisted that since the wine makes up 75-80% of what’s in the glass, it should be “the bright shining star” that the botanicals are selected to complement. He fully expects his vermouth to change from year to year, he added, since he switches up the base wine with each vintage. This year, he’s using local Pinot Gris; next year, the base will be Sémillon.

To cap it all off,  Sutton mixed up a round of Bamboo cocktails for the crowd – here’s the recipe:

Bamboo Cocktail

1½ oz. Lustau amontillado sherry

1½ oz. Sutton Cellars dry vermouth

2 dashes orange bitters

1 dash Angostura bitters

Stir together all ingredients with ice, and strain into a cocktail glass.   Garnish with a lemon peel twist.

Blast from the Past: The Ultimate “Mad Men” Martini

The return of Mad Men on April 7 seems like a fine excuse to revive this post, which originally ran on March 18, 2012. A retro post about a retro show – Cheers!

Yes — I am one of those geeks counting the days until Mad Men returns (7 days left!). So I was happy to receive a copy of The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook, which is refreshing my memory about seasons past and teaching me a few new culinary history tidbits.

At first, I couldn’t decide which drink to make. The 21 Club’s version of the classic Bloody Mary? The campy Blue Hawaii? In the end, I decided simplicity was best, and opted for the sleek, streamlined Martini. (It didn’t hurt that I have a shiny new bottle of Imbue vermouth in my fridge.)

[A quick aside:  Ever try to photograph a Martini? They might taste crisp and refreshing, but they look like dullsville on film. My husband gets 99% of the credit for the photo above. Hey, I made the drink!]

Here’s the recipe from the book, by way of New York’s legendary Grand Central Oyster Bar. Although I have oversized glasses and thus made mine a double, the Oyster Bar likely wouldn’t approve. According to the book, the restaurant recommends using small martini glasses, because the martini gets too warm in a larger glass.

Martini

Courtesy of The Grand Central Oyster Bar, New York, NY

Note:  Serve in a small martini glass and put leftovers in a rocks glass.

1/8 ounce dry vermouth

2 1/2 ounces gin

1. Fill a martini glass with water and large ice cubes (enough to keep it cold while mixing drink).

2. Pour vermouth and gin into a mixing glass and stir.

3. Pour ice and water out of martini glass. Pour martini from mixing glass into martini glass.

Source: “The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook” by Judy Gelman and Peter Zheutlin.

Cocktail experiment: Sweet Broiled Lemon Margarita (by way of Tony Conigliaro)

When I was in San Francisco a few weeks back, I popped into the awesome Omnivore Books and picked up a copy of Tony Conigliaro’s new book, Drinks.

It’s a really interesting book:  deeply scientific, with lots of rumination about concept drinks and recipes that most people can’t make at home unless they happen to have sous-vide equipment and malic acid on hand.

This is not one of those recipes.

Rather, this is from the “Culinary Skills” chapter (aka Chapter 2), one of the more accessible chapters in the book — although readers still will need to flip to the back of the book to learn techniques like say, how to make Grilled Lemon Juice.

Note:  Conigliaro’s recipe is called the “Grilled Lemon Margarita.” I used the broiler on my stove rather than an outdoor grill, so to my American mind the key ingredient is “Broiled Lemon Juice” — not “Grilled Lemon Juice.”

Semantics aside, Broiled Lemon Juice is worth the effort — it tempers the tartness found in uncooked lemon juice, and creates a lightly caramelized flavor and slightly thickened texture. Explains Conigliaro:  “Grilling the lemon relieves the fruit of its acid bite by caramelising the fructose and killing its vitamin C.”

Conigliaro rightly points out that the caramelized/caramelised lemon juice is a perfect match for the caramel and toffee notes found in reposado tequila. I also experimented with rye whiskey — also full of caramel and vanilla notes — and it was an equally harmonious match.

Home bartenders will find two hurdles in trying to make drinks from this otherwise fascinating book. First, there’s the molecular wizard hurdle — I don’t own a Superbag or a homogenizer, so in the recipe below I’ve adapted it using tools I have in my own kitchen. Second, he’s English, so recipes are given in milliliters (um, millilitres) instead of ounces, as American recipes use. So in effect, I’ve translated this recipe twice.

Take that as a hint:  make two drinks.

Sweet Broiled Lemon Margarita

adapted from Drinks, by Tony Conigliaro

Step 1: Make Broiled Lemon Juice

This makes about 1/4 cup lemon juice – enough for 2 drinks, with a little extra. (Conigliaro calls for 5 lemons; I cut this down.)

2 lemons, cut in half

Place lemons, cut side up, under a broiler. Grill under high heat until golden brown. (Note – Conigliaro calls for “medium heat.” My oven doesn’t have that setting. It took 12 minutes for the lemons to turn brown.)

Juice the broiled lemons. (Note – the lemons will be HOT. Allow them to cool first. Happily, the lemon halves will now juice as easily as if they’re made of butter.)

Strain using cheesecloth. (Conigliaro calls for a Superbag.)

Step 2: Make the cocktail

Ingredients

1 1/2 ounces reposado tequila

3/4 ounce broiled lemon juice

1/2 ounce triple sec

Sugar, for the rim

Combine all of the ingredients except the sugar in a cocktail shaker and shake with cubed ice.

Fine-strain and pour into a chilled coupette with a half sugar rim.

5/7/13:  UPDATE:  Apparently I’m not the only one translating measurements. An Americanized version of Conigliaro’s “Drinks” book will be published on July 16, under the name “The Cocktail Lab.”

Cocktail recipe: East River Defense

My article, Your Cocktail’s Been A-Salted! appears in the March/April 2013 issue of Arrive Magazine, which –for once!– I got to read in hard copy format as I trundled along from NY to Baltimore and back again last week on Amtrak.

Gotta love any publication that lets me get away with a pun like that in the headline!

I’ve been looking forward to showcasing the East River Defense cocktail in the photo above ever since I first went to Northern Spy, a sweet little locavore spot in the East Village about a year ago.  I was there to interview Co-owner and Beverage Director Chris Ronis for a Wine Enthusiast feature about Aperitif Cocktails, and although it wasn’t part of the article, this was the drink I walked away thinking about — it had the strangest sweet-salty-tart-refreshing combination.

Northern Spy doesn’t have a full liquor license — they can serve only wine and beer. Luckily, that includes fortified wines (like sherry) and aperitif wines, so the drinks list still is robust and interesting.  In part, it’s that way because Ronis brought in mixologist Erick Castro to create the drinks. (If Castro’s name sounds familiar, perhaps that’s because you’ve been reading about his buzz-y new bar in San Diego, Polite Provisions.)

Although Ronis told me that this is based on a classic Cobbler, I think it’s even closer to the Paloma, a tequila drink made with grapefruit soda. Either way, it’s a perfect cocktail to transition into early spring.

East River Defense

Created by Erick Castro for Northern Spy ((New York, NY).  Nubbly “sea-salted ice” plus briny Manzanilla sherry gives the drink a refreshing salt-air tang.

1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt

3 ounces Manzanilla sherry

1 ounce lemon juice

1 ounce simple syrup

3 dashes Scrappy’s grapefruit bitters

Soda water

Scoop ice into a Collins glass, and sprinkle with coarse sea salt. In a cocktail shaker, combine sherry, lemon juice, simple syrup and bitters. Shake well, and strain into glass over the sea-salted ice. Top with soda water. Garnish with a grapefruit wedge and serve with a straw.

Cocktail recipe: Suppressor #7

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with “aperitif” cocktails, often made with lower alcohol levels and showcasing lovely vermouths, fortified wines, and bitter spirits like Cynar. And the July issue of Wine Enthusiast magazine includes my article on Aperitif Cocktails.

One of the most entertaining stories in aperitif-land now is in public transportation-challenged Atlanta, GA, where the bartenders banded together to find the polar opposite of the super-boozy Corpse Reviver and its brethren.

“This is a driving town,” explained Greg Best, co-owner and bartender at Atlanta’s Holeman & Finch. “It can get dangerous.” So in a grand effort to suppress alcohol levels, Atlanta’s mixologists hosted a contest to build a better, and lower-octane, cockail canon. The end result:  a new cocktail category called Suppressors.

I’d love to see every bar and restaurant have a lower-alcohol aperitif section on their menu; some “aperitifs” can be pretty darn strong. In my article, I featured Suppressor #21 (Cynar, Barolo Chinato, sherry, created by Paul Calvert of Pura Vida Tapas), as well as recipes sourced from Northern Spy in NY and OAK at fourteenth in Boulder. But here’s a second Suppressor cocktail created by Best, which had to be cut from the article for space reasons. It’s delicious, and quickly disappeared as soon as I shot this photo.

Suppressor #7

by Greg Best, Holeman & Finch

Pommeau de Normandy is a French apple brandy that’s lightened with unfermented apple cider.

1 ounce Cynar

1 ounce Pommeau de Normandy

1 ounce crisp sparkling wine, such as Cava

1 lemon peel

In a mixing glass, stir together Cynar, Pommeau and ice. Strain into a sherry tulip or riesling tulip glass. Pour in sparkling wine, then express oils from lemon peel over the top and discard the peel.

Cocktail Recipe: The Amazing Teflon Rhubarb Cooler

Some people are downright breezy when it comes to messing with recipes. Not me:  I fret when I start tweaking ingredients, convinced that I’ll ruin the drink.

But not this one. You can’t hurt this recipe — it’s like cocktail teflon.

This drink started life as “The Rhubarb Cooler.” But I’ve since realized that I might was well rename this versatile cocktail “The Whatever Seasonal Produce You Can Get Your Hands On Cooler,” since it’s easily adaptable… and the window for rhubarb is very, very short.

Sure, I’ve made it with rhubarb. The last of it is probably at the greenmarket right now. When rhubarb is in season, I’ll sometimes cut the rosy-red stalks into half-inch pieces and puree them in the food processor. After the stalks are pulverized into smithereens, the fibrous mess can be spooned into a piece of cheesecloth, and the juices squeezed out into a measuring cup. Only an ounce of the vibrant ruby juice is needed for one cocktail.

But the rhubarb season is short — mid-to-late spring– and I foolishly agreed to make this drink for Martha Stewart’s “Cooking Today” show on Sirius at the tail end of March. I went to the greenmarket, the supermarket, and what did I find? NO RHUBARB. I was too early!

So I substituted strawberry lemonade, to approximate the rosy hue and tart punch of fresh rhubarb. And it was delicious!

So I’ve been experimenting with the juices in this drink:  as long as there’s a tart element (lemonade or fresh lemon juice) to balance out the sweetness of the fruit juice and liqueur, it works great. Fresh strawberries, raspberries, fresh-pressed apple juice. It all works. No mint for the garnish? Try basil (probably would be amazing with a strawberry variation). Try coriander, or rosemary.

Another change that seems to make for a more forgiving cocktail:  I’ve switched the format from straight up to on the rocks. The gradual dilution seems to smooth any remaining rough edges.

Teflon, I tell you.

Rhubarb Cooler  Teflon Rhubarb Cooler

adapted from “Spice & Ice: 60 tongue-tingling cocktails,” by Kara Newman

1 ½ ounces Maker’s Mark bourbon

1 ounce Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur

1 ounce rhubarb puree * (or other amount of seasonal fruit juice, plus a squeeze of lemon)

1 mint sprig, for garnish

Vigorously shake together the bourbon, ginger liqueur and rhubarb puree with ice, until frothy. Strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice. Garnish with mint sprig, and offer a straw.

*For rhubarb puree:

1 ½ cups 1-inch pieces rhubarb

Puree the rhubarb in a blender and strain out the sediment through cheesecloth. Makes enough for several drinks.

Cocktail recipe: The Highland Tequila Fling

If you’re looking for tequila shooters, move on. This is an elegant, spirit-forward sipper, which I made for the Martha Stewart radio show on Sirius last week (on the radio, no one can see you spill...). It’s a mash-up of a few different influences:

–First, this is a riff on the classic Highland cocktail (Scotch, sweet vermouth, orange bitters). But since this was a show about Spring cocktails, I wanted to showcase a lighter spirit. Since both Scotch and tequila have highlands and lowlands variations, a tequila-based Highland became my starting point.

–It didn’t hurt that I had on hand a really nice highlands tequila (Vida reposado). It has gentle vanilla and honeyed agave flavors that remind me a bit of a light Speyside whiskey. The stars were aligning for the drink.

–A couple of weeks earlier, I’d sampled a (Scotch-based) “Highland Fling” cocktail at an event hosted by Compass Box. That drink, made by fab LUPEC lady Eryn Reece, was my favorite of the evening. Her secret ingredient? Tea-infused Dolin Blanc. That became another source of inspiration.

The Highland Tequila Fling

A sophisticated approach to tequila, loosely based on the classic Highland cocktail.

1 ½ ounces tequila reposado

1 ½ ounce chamomile-infused dry vermouth*

½ tsp agave nectar

1 dash Fee Bros peach bitters

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass, with ice. Stir well for 20 seconds and strain into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with orange peel knot.

*To make infused vermouth: dunk 4 chamomile tea bags in hot water, then remove and place the tea bags in 1 cup vermouth. Allow to steep for at least 5 minutes, then squeeze out any excess liquid and discard the tea bags. Makes enough for several drinks.

Would you put vodka in your Negroni?

So, this writer walks into a bar….

No, it’s not the beginning of a joke. It’s what I did Tuesday night. Not a craft cocktail bar, not a fancy hotel bar, just an ordinary neighborhood bar on my way home. And I ordered what’s become my go-to recently:  “A Negroni, please.”

“Certainly,” the bartender responded. “Would you like that with vodka or gin?”

That gave me a moment’s pause — no one has ever asked me that before!– and I stuttered out my response: “Gin, please.” As the bartender finished another order and then began mine — Campari, sweet vermouth, and gin –I thumbed out a quick post on Twitter:

Hmmm…first time a bartender has asked if I’d like my Negroni “with vodka or gin.” Should I run?

— Kara Newman (@karanewman) February 22, 2012

The responses flew in before I’d even finished my drink. “RUN!” urged @inukena. “YES, RUN!” echoed @feeedme. Emboldened by alcohol, I finally asked the bartender:  “So…do people really order Negronis with vodka?” He nodded solemnly. “Oh, yes. It’s the vodka generation. But personally, I prefer gin.” I polished off the rest of my drink and posted again:

Ok, final result on that Negroni: false alarm. Guy knows what he’s doing; good Negroni. He’s just extra accommodating.

— Kara Newman (@karanewman) February 22, 2012

But clearly I had touched a nerve. The responses continued to roll in over the next 24 hours:

@inukena:  (Collective sigh of relief)

@RobertOSimonson:  He still should never ask that question. With a Martini, I’d grudgingly accept it. A Negroni? No.

@LegendofMyself:   you can choose between the Negroni which is with gin, the Negroski with dry vodka and the “wrong” Negroni with brut champagne

@orpheum:  People order Negronis with vodka? Shame on them. Shame!

@raelinn_wine:  VILE! pffff vodka in a negroni.

@nikki_d:  Vodka in a negroni? Yikes!

@SpiritManager:  But if you make it with Vodka, is it still a Negroni? Shouldn’t it have a different name?

All this anti-vodka vitriol! OK. So cranky contrarian that I am, I couldn’t help it. Last night, I returned the same bar, and asked the same bartender:  “Negroni, please. But this time….I’ll try it with vodka.”

He did a double-take, but quickly recovered, and made my drink. As he stirred, I explained my reasoning:  My preferred gin for a Negroni is Plymouth, because it’s soft and neutral, and not overly juniper-y. But isn’t that just a step removed from vodka anyway? And wouldn’t bitter Campari overwhelm the nuances in gin, anyhow?

 He nodded, clearly placating the babbling guest, and set my drink down.

So how was it? The gin-based Negroni was much, much better than the vodka version.  I can’t explain why. Frankly, it’s not logical, and the best I can offer is some lame excuse about the alchemy between the three ingredients that make up the cocktail.

But the bartender understood when he saw me push away the barely-touched drink, and repeated his line from the night before.

“Personally, I prefer gin.”

Me too, barkeep. Me too.

Two Cordiall recipes from MFK Fisher

M.F.K. Fisher was not a drinks writer. She wrote wonderfully and extensively about food, but to the extent that she considered beverages at all, especially during her writing days in France and later, California, generally she preferred wine.

So when my husband found this 1963 copy of “A Cordiall Water” by Fisher, he sweetly thought he was buying for me a treasure — one of my favorite writers, writing about one of my favorite topics. It’s not hard to see why — doesn’t that drawing suggest a botanical gin, guzzled from a coupe glass?

Sadly, the book is almost entirely about health remedies, ranging from “useless quackery” to alarming and clearly dangerous. And frankly, I really could have done without the pontification on ways human excrement has been used through history to enhance one’s health and beauty.

That said, it’s fascinating to see how many times booze is invoked in health cures, including a couple of promising-sounding recipes for spirituous elixirs. For example, this unnamed one:

Take the flowers of at least 15 kinds of meadow plants, and the roots of at least five more, such as Peony, Licorice, and Hepatica. Clean and slice them finely, and cover them with white wine, to steep three days. Stir well, night and morning. Bring to the boil, and strain.

Mix with equal parts fine honey and with five parts of good fruit brandy. Store in a wooden cask for one year, and bottle. Drink cold or lukewarm on an empty stomach, to restore appetite, or a full one, to encourage it.

And here’s another tonic, which previously began “Take 12 quart bottles of the best bourbon whiskey…” but Fisher decoded “into a puny pint-size formula”:

Mrs. Lackner’s Mountain Bitters

Take Western sage blossoms, which must be gathered thoroughly dried and cured in the sun, and pack them into an empty pint bottle to the depth of two inches or more. Add to this the peel of one lemon which has been detached from its fruit and thoroughly dried in the sun. Fill the bottle to the top with good bourbon, and let stand for at least two weeks before using…the longer the better.”

Though I’d never make either of these for medicinal purposes, I’d still love to run these past people who are making bitters and infusions at home — are these viable recipes worth experimenting with today?